band called the ring, each of these three components being insulated from one another. In the Bell System, the two stations were thus called the tip party and the ring party, In combination with code ringing, this method could be extended to four and eight subscribers to reduce the number of disturbances. In several variations of divided ringing, also called grounded ringing, the bells were activated with polarized current, so that full selectivity was achieved for up to four parties. Another selective ringing system was based on using different ringing frequencies for each station on the party line. In North America, this was used mostly by independent telephone systems, while the Bell System abandoned frequency selective ringing in the early 1900s. Initially four frequencies were used, which were based on a system of harmonic multiples of a frequency of Hz. Combined with divided ringing, this provided fully selective service for up to eight stations. All fully selective ringing systems on party lines still brought the inconvenience of finding the line in use occasionally, by hearing talking when one picked up the phone to make a call. All party lines also required special equipment to complete calls to another party on the same party line. Characteristics In the local-battery system of the early cranked magneto phones, the phone's own battery powered its transmitter as well as the receiver of the called phone. If too many phones were off-hook and listening, the additional receivers would load down the transmitter's battery with a voltage so low that no phone could receive an intelligible signal. With party-line service, particularly if there were more than two subscribers on the line, it was often necessary to complete a long-distance call through the operator to identify and correctly bill the calling party. In some cases, the calling party would misidentify themselves in an attempt to send the bill to another party. A two-party line split between tip party and ring party could be created in such a way as to allow the central office to determine which party placed an outbound toll call by detecting that one of the ringers was disconnected when that subscriber went off-hook. This system would fail if any provision was made to allow the subscriber to turn off the bells (do not disturb) for privacy or unplug the telephone. It also presumed that each subscriber only had one telephone connected to the